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Technology Stocks : FCL - FuelCell Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wafa SHIHABI who wrote (324)	11/24/1999 3:45:00 AM
From: Sid Turtlman	Respond to of 407

Wafa: When you add in the value of the EVRC shares and rights shareholders were given, FCL has certainly done well in the last year. BLDP hasn't, but in both cases the cause of the price movement has been more a change in investor perceptions than any hard news. I think the next year will be one in which both companies have to start producing more concrete results. FCL will have to show some initial orders for its product, and line up a strategic partner willing to fund its next big capacity expansion, to help with marketing, and to provide other skills that FCL lacks. FCL is in a chicken-and-egg situation, with the possibility of ultimately picking up hundreds of millions to billions of dollars of business once it has its costs way down, which it won't be able to do unless it has a lot more capacity, both physical and fiscal, which is difficult to justify building without the orders. In the next year it has to get the process rolling with orders and financing. If it does, the stock could go a lot higher. If it doesn't, then the question would be whether it should continue as an independent company, or should it be taken over by someone with more muscle. BLDP is also at an interesting juncture. Until now it could get away with promises about the great hydrogen future, but in the next year people are going to want to see some concrete commitments from the car companies, such as starting to build plants to make fc cars. Its stationary efforts are behind FCLs, since the stated purpose of its field trials are to refine the design of what will be its commercial product, rather than start selling the existing design. That, and the existence of its large cash war chest, means that BLDP is under less pressure than FCL to show something in the stationary area in 2000. But my sense is that BLDP is viewed mainly as a car fc stock, and it will rise and fall mainly based on people's perceptions of its progress in that area, rather than stationary. So where will the stocks go? Beats me, but they should both be real interesting over the next year, one way or the other.